Sweet and sour role

Brittany Snow's not so innocent on FX

Last time she crossed the TV screen, Brittany Snow was sweet, innocent Meg on family-friendly "American Dreams."

Forget all that. She's a big girl now.

The 19-year-old actress begins a five-episode run at 9 p.m. Tuesday on FX's "Nip/Tuck" playing an edgy, dark role in a show that defines edgy and dark.

With black eyeliner, a swastika earring and a really twisted view of the world, Snow's character, Ariel Alderman, is 180 degrees from lovely Meg and blows away the teen role Snow played back in her soap days on "Guiding Light."

Ariel is bad news from the moment she gets her hooks into Dr. Sean McNamara's rebellious son, Matt (John Hensley).

"I feel like it's very easy to play the sweet, innocent girl, because I am pretty innocent," Snow said. "But there is a dark side too."

"Nip/Tuck" is about as far from "American Dreams" as Snow could have gotten, short of a role in "Saw III." The series, now in its third season, chronicles the manic lives of Miami plastic surgeons McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon). The pair takes on the weirdest cases (an obese woman had to be surgically removed from her couch in one episode) while weaving in even weirder dramatic tales of their personal lives (a porn-star lover, a transgender affair, orgies and a serial slasher known as the Carver).

Snow enters as Hensley's character spins out of control. After an affair last season with a 40-year-old transgender life coach and learning that his biological father actually is Troy, Matt has alienated his parents, left home and resorted to drugs. In her first few scenes, Snow makes all that look like child's play.

Snow's character Ariel is part of an insidiously racist family. The family members' ability to rationalize hateful beliefs is downright creepy. And Ariel's ability to draw in a morally lost Matt makes the skin crawl.

"I'm not a Nazi, Matt, but I am a purist," she coos in one scene.

Playing Ariel has been a challenge, Snow said.

"What's hard about that character is really making it seem like she does have a point, even though it's crazy and wrong," Snow said. "She really does, with her whole heart, believe this."